SocietyWatch

Most Americans do not have enough for retirement

The United States Government Accountability Office published a report on Oct. 18, 2017, warning that unless the nation makes drastic changes, America will face a serious retirement crisis in a few years. The government projects that by 2035, Social Security will be unable to pay what it has promised retirees.

In 2015, 3 out of 5 American retirees relied on Social Security checks for at least half of their income, more than 1 in 3 relied on them for 90 percent of their income, and 1 in 5 relied on them for their entire income.

Ten thousand baby boomers hit retirement age every day, yet research shows that the vast majority of retirees don’t have enough savings to last through retirement. Teresa Ghilarducci, a labor economist specializing in retirement security, told the Washington Post, ”There is no part of the country where the majority of middle-class older workers have adequate retirement savings to maintain their standard of living in their retirement” (Sept. 30, 2017).

Ghilarducci’s research shows that people nearing retirement age are behind recommended savings by almost a third. Less than 25 percent of baby boomers believe the money they have saved will last as long as they need it to.

Millennials are becoming witches

An October 2017 Pew Research Center report reveals that 56 percent of United States adults surveyed say “it is not necessary to believe in God to be moral and have good values.” This number is up 7 percent from the figure reported in a 2011 survey.

If more Americans say it is not necessary to believe in God to be moral, what do they believe in?

MarketWatch’s Kari Paul wrote that the millennial generation (ages 18 to 29) is staying spiritual by embracing witchcraft and astrology: “Interest in spirituality has been booming in recent years while interest in religion plummets, especially among millennials. … The percentage of people between the ages of 18 and 29 who ‘never doubt existence of God’ fell from 81 percent in 2007 to 67 percent in 2012. Meanwhile, more than half of young adults in the U.S. believe astrology is a science, compared to less than 8 percent of the Chinese public.”

The psychic services industry grew by 2 percent between 2011 and 2016. It is now worth $2 billion annually. This industry includes astrology, mediumship, tarot-card reading, palm-reading and other “metaphysical services.”

U.S. drug overdose deaths triple in 16 years

In the United States, the number of deaths from drug overdoses has more than doubled in the last 16 years across all demographics. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published a report on Oct. 20, 2017, stating that more than 52,000 Americans died of drug overdoses in 2015. That figure is 211 percent higher than the 16,849 drug overdoses in 1999. Drug overdoses now kill more people than suicide, homicide, car crashes or firearm deaths.

Doctors encouraging British teens to change genders

The United Kingdom’s National Health Service (nhs) is now referring 50 children a week to transgender clinics based on their claims that they are trapped in the wrong body, the Daily Mail reported on Oct. 28, 2017. The report said many parents believe “overzealous therapists” are pressuring their teenagers to undergo transgender operations.

Concerned parents fear that clinic staff are “blindly accepting” children’s claims that they were born with the “wrong” gender, and that they are failing to treat serious mental health conditions.

According to the Daily Mail, doctors refuse to even question a confused teenager about gender changes because they “fear being sued after the nhs signed a ‘memorandum of understanding’ banning staff from challenging patients who believe they are born the wrong sex.”

Many teens are confused about their gender because people in the entertainment industry, social media and even the government are aggressively promoting transgenderism. The Daily Mail gave several examples of children who have been pressured and bullied by their peers to seek sex-change procedures. One mother was horrified to learn that her 15-year-old daughter was referred to the transgender clinic after only a 40-minute consultation.